“The gospel does not promise you better life circumstances; it promises you a better life.”

To discover the real you, look at what you spend time thinking about when no one is looking.

Religion: ‘My identity is built on being a good person.’ Gospel: ‘My identity is not built on my record or my performance but on Christ’s.’

Many times people think if God has called you to something, he’s promising you success. He might be calling you to fail to prepare you for something else through the failure.

We have to be careful not to elevate our preferences to moral standards and judge others by them. We only do so to feel superior.

If anything becomes more fundamental than God to your happiness, meaning of life, and identity then it is an idol.

We are regularly in danger of having too light a view of our sin and also too light a grasp of what Jesus has done to free us from our sin.

Jesus Christ did not suffer so that you would not suffer. He suffered so that when you suffer, you’ll become more like him.

Religion operates on the principle ‘I obey-therefore I am accepted by God.’ But the operating principle of the gospel is ‘I am accepted by God through what Christ has done-therefore I obey.’

Worry is not believing God will get it right, and bitterness is believing God got it wrong.

To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God.

The basic premise of religion– that if you live a good life, things will go well for you– is wrong. Jesus was the most morally upright person who ever lived, yet He had a life filled with the experience of poverty, rejection, injustice, and even torture.

As long as we think we are not that bad, the idea of grace will never change us.

Tolerance isn’t about not having beliefs. It’s about how your beliefs lead you to treat people who disagree with you.

Trust is accepting what God sends into your life whether you understand it or not.

When I forget the gospel I become dependent on the smiles and evaluation of others.

The world values power, comfort, success, and recognition. Jesus frees us to value grief, sacrifice, weakness, and exclusion.

And remember: you must never, under any circumstances, despair. To hope and to act, these are our duties in misfortune.

Well, when you write about people of a certain age we are in a postsexual situation. If I write about younger people then I write sexually, because their drive is sexual. It depends upon the circumstances.

Circumstances define us; they force us onto one road or another, and then they punish us for it.

Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping.

Do you know the times when one seems to stick fast in circumstances like the fly in the jam-pot? It can’t be helped, and I suppose the best thing to do is to lay in a good store of jam!

When you cannot rejoice in feelings, circumstances or conditions, rejoice in the Lord.

The changeful change of circumstances. [Lat., Varia sors rerum.]

The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstances, whether created by others or by one’s own human failing.